While China has become a country that has begun to manufacture nearly everything, or components of nearly everything, it is still being dogged as a country who only produces low quality crap on a regular basis.
It is something that for me defies logic as I know that Dell, Philips, and Samsung, Panasonic, Nokia and others have huge operations for manufacturing consumer electronics. at the same time that Medtronic, Bayer, Haemonetics, and GE manufacture healthcare equipment at the same time BMW, Toyota, GM, Briggs & Straton, and Cummins manufacture automobiles at the same time Boeing, Airbus, and Rolls Royce manufacture airplane parts… in CHINA
Sure, there is a fair amount of cheap crap being produced plushy toys, lighters, pens, etc, but at what point will China get away from being known as a country that produces 2nd and 3rd generation goods at low cost to a country that is known for producing high value goods
Why I bring this up, is that I just read the Consumerist article Restoration Hardware Shifting Nearly All Of Its Furniture Production To China?, where the article and more than a few comments land blast China’s product quality
Quoted: Author
Or wait, maybe the company is lying now. Actually, you can’t get the identical quality furniture made more cheaply in China. It will be a product of lesser quality but the company is hoping really hard that charging a couple of hundred dollars less will mean that people will be blinded by the good deal.
Comment:
Made in China is like a warning sticker that says do not but this potentially dangerous poorly made product.
For sure, the Chinese furniture industry is a huge one and there are a wide range of qualities that can be found here, and the author and readers of the article need to understand a simple rule of China.
If company X comes to China to produce a crappy product at a lower cost, that doesn’t mean that China produces crappy product. It means that company was only willing to pay for a crappy product.
Stumble it!
August 21st, 2008 at 8:32 am
If company X comes to China, their suppliers WILL substitute low-quality products and hope that they get away with it. It’s not about purchasing low-quality products, it’s about purchasing a high-quality product and finding out later that someone swapped out the gluten that you paid for and substituted toxic melamine instead. It’s finding out that the fireproof ABS plastic that you paid for has been mixed with a lower grade that doesn’t pass UL standards. It’s finding that a factory has made 100,000 products for children, and didn’t use the glue you specified because it was too expensive and too troublesome to import, they used some superglue that they bought from the store across the road instead. Superglue with a skull and crossbones on the label. Been there, done that…
August 21st, 2008 at 8:46 am
Craig.
Sure this happens, but it is not 100% of the time, and it is really something that is dependent on the buyer as well… and the structure.
For us using contract manufacturers, we QC at different points and work with the supplier at several spots in the order.. so not much a supplier can do that we don’t know about.
for GE or a major MNC, this is all mute point, and this gets back to my post. Are GE products (made in China) crap? As foreign controlled manufacturing makes up a significant (up to 50%) of the good manufactured, and high tech products are making up a significant part of the entire pie, is it still fair to say that Chinese products are cheap crap?
Or should we start looking a little deeper?
R
August 21st, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Which product should I buy, one that is made in China, where making a quality product is more difficult due to difficulties in finding quality supply of material, and quality workmanship, or a product that is made elsewhere where such problems are not as severe ? Which one should I spend more time inspecting to see that it is actually a good product ?
Any marginal increase in doubt about the product quality means more time and money spent. And does a “made in China” label increase my doubt about a product over that from, say Germany, knowing you can get bad products from both countries ?
August 21st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Agree with your idea, if a company goes to China to make a crapy product is not a fault of China, but for the most of people is not that in China they make crapy, is that in China everything is bad quality.
Honestly I hope it folow like that because the occidentals know where to go to make a factory of cheap products but they didnt thought who is going to buy, also cheap products, after some years and when all occidental factories close and live the buyers without job and incomes.
I saw in a good shop a laptop of a well known brand of computers at 700 euros, with 17″ and all the components as a very complete product, the problem is that the machine is finished with a very low quality brilliant plastic that reflex as bad as the quality is. Perception is bad, price is incredible. An spanish couple were commenting ¨for sure is made in china¨ (the brand is american), ¨live it, is going to have problems if it is too cheap¨ says the woman.
Other examples are with fabrics and furnitures, I worked in decoration business, and the people is saying everytime more ¨I tried with chinese things (maybe were not but they thought ¨chinese¨ only because were cheap products) but I prefer to pay more and not to change the curtains every year¨.
All the people are waiting here the chinese cars, ¨a brand with a model like BMW at 10.000 euros!!¨, and the european brands are helping their own future quote losses lowing the quality of the materials they use in their models to make the cars everytime cheaper, forgetting that they can not to compete in cheap cars.
With these thoughts, not 100% right as all very general ideas, If China order a law to keep a minimum standard quality in every product the factories working there make, is going to be the deffinitive step to win the future market, the present is already of them of course.
Good web, congratulations, very useful to know how the business things are in China, and to help foreign people to know that is not the country who made the crapy products but many of the occidental brands who make there what they dont do in their countries without lose the face -or brand-.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:56 pm
This problems goes much deeper than one might think … if X goes to a factory to get something produced, it doesnt just depend on the money paid it also depends on the relationship that the client has with the factory, on whether on not they bargained hard ( bargained just to get cheapest price or bargained to a win-win situation ) , on whether they ( X ) are willing to trust the factory or want the factory to sign a contract ( a sign of low/no trust for them ).
We have worked on million $ orders with the very local suppliers in Taizhou ( Zhejiang ) without ever having contracts and purely on trust & relationship , and anytime we have had problems is because either we did not specify which raw material to use or we bargained too hard and they substituted the raw materials ( A problem which is very easily solved if you just ask them when negotiating whether the final price will affect any smallest raw material cost and more often than not the factory will tell you if the cost is too low for them to use the best raw materials )
You can never say that the factory ‘WILL’ screw you up, it just means that you have approached the factories making up your mind that they will screw you and you dont trust them from the time you walk into their company.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Bill
You ask some interesting questions, and address a very interesting points on what is your time worth, how much time should you spend to qualify a product, and what your choices are.
the question I have is whether or not it is so clear. When you are looking at a German toy that is hand crafted vs. a Barbie doll made by Mattel in China.. are you necessarily comparing apples to apples?
one step further, should you have the choice between a Barbie made in Germany vs. a Barbie made in China which would you choose?
R
August 21st, 2008 at 9:16 pm
One of our Italian clients manufactures furniture in Qingdao. That furniture - a top quality product - ends up being purchased by their buyers, and in one major case, is sold to the Kremlin for use in Russia’s State Ballrooms and Palaces, whom they have been supplying for the past ten years.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Nru.
would very much agree with that. I know people who bargain hard and it creates a relationship right away that is about savings for the buyer… how can a supplier not absorb some of that attitude?
We had a situation where there was a problem, and it clearly was in our court where the fault lied. We had not discussed the various metal properties with the supplier well enough, and while they stayed at the same grade, there was an extra parameter we had not worked through. It was noticed in the next step, and we had to fork out the extra doe to make it right…. and when the supplier messed up later on, it only made it easier to work through.
R
August 21st, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Chris.
I have a friend, not supply to the Kremlin, who started his own line in China. Spent 9 months going through factory after factory and in the end put together a supply chain that produces some of the best quality stuff around. goes for 2000 USD a pop, and no one sitting on them would say they are cheap in quality.
R
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:43 am
Interesting comments. In visits to China it always amazes me how a country that can put a man in space and build bullet trains still has not mastered the art of screwing down a toilet seat. Or, you buy a glue stick, the top falls off on unwrapping, and that’s it, product dead. Or you buy a badminton racket and the strings are snapping in days. This kind of stuff was par for the course in the 1980s, but it is really disappointing to find in 2008 that a small but significant chunk of the economy is still producing completely worthless crap and getting away with it in the market–and at the same time giving ammunition to critics. I really hope this problem sorts itself out in the next few years.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:48 am
oohkuchi,
Next time you go to a supermarket in China to buy a badminton racket don’t buy the 5rmb racket go for the 50rmb one, they also make the good stuff but people buy/order the cheap crap and then blame China for it. I know a LOT of companies who dont want to sell to certain countries ( Indian subcontinent for instance ) because they say that the buyers from these countries need really cheap stuff or/and bargain a lot…. You cannot expect the whole country to change overnight, you compare it to itself a few years ago instead of comparing it with germany or other developed places where there are hardly enough people to fill a Chinese city.
Nru